Related

After months of speculation and rumors about who would next play the Caped Crusader, it was announced late Thursday that Batman will be none other than Ben Affleck.

Warner Brothers said the Argo star will take on the role in the upcoming Man of Steel sequel from director Zack Snyder. Fans have known since this year’s Comic-Con that the Steel follow-up will feature not only Henry Cavill as Superman but also his fellow DC Comics vigilante Batman. And based on the suggested source material (the comic The Dark Knight Returns), it’s been thought that whoever would fill Bruce Wayne’s bodysuit would have to go head-to-head with Cavill when the two classic heroes battle it out.

With all that anticipation (and coming off Christian Bale’s acclaimed run as Batman) online reactions to the news that Affleck has the job have been unsurprisingly vocal, and largely negative. Here are seven reasons why, according to the Twitter-verse, it is the duty of every good citizen of Gotham to criticize Ben Affleck:

7. The hashtag “#BetterBatmanThanBenAffleck” still leaves you 113 characters to make a suggestion

On a larger level, the heated reaction to Affleck’s casting news exposes one of the problems with gauging public opinion using Twitter. It’s a great medium for expressing extreme excitement and an even better medium for expressing derision (after all, a quippy one-liner is more fun to write than “OMG!” is). Because Affleck’s casting is unexpected but not totally crazy — he’s already a major star — the positive reactions to the news so far are mostly along the lines of “he could do a good job,” which is not a very interesting thing to say on Twitter.

Not that that’s stopping some people:

Everyone hating on Ben Affleck for batman? I LOVE IT. You get it Ben. Let me get my Alias on with your wife! 💋✌